


Nostalgia, or the second most populous city

by sapoeysap



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Christmas, M/M, Mild Language, Navel-Gazing, Nostalgia, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-23 01:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17070875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/sapoeysap
Summary: Andrew wakes up on the first day of December to a slightly different world.Slightly different in that its exactly the same, but missing one very important component.





	Nostalgia, or the second most populous city

**Author's Note:**

> who sat down and wrote a holiday fic that involed alternate universes, the feeling of nostaglia, shane and ryan being dumbasses, adam being adam and andrew being a fool in love.  
> this was influence by [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooAXOP5LpWQ) which i love a lot and feels very appropriate for andrew/steven
> 
> merry christmas, happy holidays

Holiday times always stir up memories, cast rose coloured lights over the proverbial ghosts of Christmas’s past. Andrew has fond nostalgia over evenings wasted in blocky colourful lands, the childhood innocence that was his world illuminated by the eerie blue glow of a CRT and its accompanied crackling silence. That fraction of time before its interrupted by a jarring segue into white noise and scrambled lines. The way the tacky lights of the Christmas tree would play out across his arms, flashing colours and speaking of magic.

This certain type of nostalgia, he’s found, is something he hasn’t quite worked out how to replicate and it’s not through lack of trying. the closest he gets is the gap of time when he wakes up to being fully awake, that hazy glow that everything takes on.

He wants to blame it on the shape the world has taken, every year like clockwork, the post-thanksgiving pre-Christmas chaos. He wants to blame it on the fact that he knows it is Winter in New York, closer to home, but it is still so warm in California. He wants to admit that he’s fearful of having to confront the fact that he dreams of kissing Steven and spends the seconds between waking up and being awake chasing the feeling of Steven in his arms. He remembers someone in the office saying something about missed connections and thinks it’s the most appropriate way to describe whatever it was between him and Steven. One big missed connection. That nothing can be done about it now.

Everything moves on, world continues to turn. Andrew continues to just be himself. Steven isn’t gone forever, he’s just three thousand miles away. In New York. Technologies great, face time is easy, there accessible, hell their job is in social media. It’s fine. Until one day it isn’t.

It turns December 1st, and Andrew watches his world tilt like a snow globe and the fragments of before float around him, strewn about in a flurry. It turns December 1st and Steven Lim ceases to exist.

They face time, the night before, Steven is the last person he talks to before going to sleep, so it’s only reasonable that Steven appears in his dreams. It’s his childhood room, the only light the blue glow of the TV, there leaning against his bed and just making out, wrapped up in each other. Steven goes to reach around Andrew for purchase and knocks a controller down. This is what jolts Andrew from the dream, knocks him into that space. His phone, nestled in the sheets from where he fell asleep holding it, glows with a message.

It’s from Annie, a cheery ‘hope you’re ready for the shoot today’, Andrew’s most definitely not ready, because there is no shoot today. There can’t be. Nobody in the office has wrestled him in too filming for anything last he checked, and there’s no Worth-It to be filmed because it’s still the season break. He checks his calendar and there it is, December 1st **shoot WI.** It’s odd, Steven mentioned nothing about a shoot the night before, the man’s in another state, so he goes to text Steven about it. A cold panic sets in his chest, when he realises there’s no message thread between him and Steven, nothing, nada. No time stamps of face times or iMessage’s. His fingers are sweaty and slip across the phone as he slides across to the gallery. A gallery devoid of any photos of Steven. He’s loathe to check it but the panic is settling into numbness, he thinks he might throw up as he opens Instagram and types Steven’s handle into the search bar. Bile comes up in his mouth as the site provides him with no results.

Shaking hands call Adam, Adams the voice of reason, part of him is trying to convince himself that he’s still dreaming. But he can read the words on his phone and he can hear Steven’s voice telling him that you can’t read words in a dream.

‘Andrew? You there?’

Adam’s voice sounds normal. So, he tries to sound normal when he replies.

‘Hey, have you heard from Steven’

Andrew knows what the answer’s going to be the moment he hears Adam take a breath, measured voice instead confused, replying ‘Andrew, whose Steven’.

He’s not quite sure where he pulls the courage from, to sound so steady when he say’s

‘Sorry I was just having a weird dream, I’m not really awake that’s all’

Adam’s so polite, ‘Well okay, see you on location in a while. Drink some coffee’

Maybe Adam’s right, that he should drink some coffee, get on with the day. Everything will fall back into place, he hopes. Getting up and out of bed feels easy, he stops before the turn into the kitchen, when he remembers the photo of him and Steven pinned on to his fridge. Every part of him still wants it to be there, it’s his favourite, one taken for a pro-shoot, him in the middle of feeding Steven, whose eyes are scrunched up in delight. If it’s not there then he feels like he might crumple.

He thinks it might be a Christmas miracle, that it still is there, pinned to the fridge in exactly the same spot it has been for the last three months. It reassures him, that Steven isn’t some grand delusion Andrew thought he’d been best friends with. That Steven is real. He takes a photo of the photo on his phone, so he has further proof of Steven. It calms him, the coffee, it just makes him shake.

Makes his hands shake enough that he thinks it wise not to drive to the location, but to get an Uber. He stares at the photo of the photo, through the winding L.A traffic. It seems reasonable, to open the notes app, and type out the things that he knows to be true. That last night he spoke to Steven about the incoming holidays, how they would exchange gifts, plans for the show. That this morning he woke up and Steven did not exist in the memory of Adam, or the everlasting network that is the internet. He types out how it makes him feel alone, but hits backspace as soon as he’s finished the sentence.

Everything passes in a weird blur, pulling up to the restaurant, being greeted with a hug and a warm handshake by Adam and a hug from Annie.

It doesn’t really hit him what’s going on, he thinks he ad-libs through the interview with the restaurant’s owner and then he’s sat down facing the camera. It’s not until he realises who’s sat next to him does, he breakdown. Adam’s arms are bigger, he has a different way about how he eats, both aggressive and refined at the same time. Everything comes out as hysterical laughter, through the tears the laughter causes he realises that its Annie filming, an Annie looking at him perplexed through a lens. There’s a gentle touch on his arm, and he thinks he might black out, relieved when he doesn’t.

Steels himself to be okay, that he can do this. For Adam and Annie. Pushes all the monotone onto his voice, blames it on a bad dream. Sips the old fashioned that pairs with the meal, and lets the food guide him. It’s what he and Steven do best, talk about food, let it hit them in the thralls of nostalgia. Food as something that can’t be replicated, a taste that you must savour before it disappears. They were good at that.

Adam’s different to be next to, he doesn’t open his eyes wide like Steven would, his reactions are in murmurs and ‘oh’s’. It’s the weirdest filming Andrew thinks he’s ever done, not used to having to be the talkative one in this way. He watches as Adam feeds Annie of his fork and ignores the way everything is wrong wrong wrong.

It’s impressive that he survives it all, makes it through all three restaurants, even picks his worth-it winner. But when he’s back in his apartment, the way Adam said ‘we can edit around it, get some better sleep’ ringing in his ears. It hits him he has no idea what kind of food they were eating, or anything that he said, or how he ended up back at the apartment.

There’s some pull in him, that he finds he’s calling another uber, and its driving down the highway and back into the traffic. There’s a tiny store, tucked away in between boutiques, he’d taken a wrong turn one day and stumbled upon it. Spotted the necklace in the window and knew who it would suit. It costs a pretty penny, but the weight of it in his hands signifies something more that monetary value. It’s a simple cross, made of rose gold on a matching fine coloured chain. He slips it around his own neck on the uber drive back, he’s warmed the metal up from holding it in his hand, and it sits delicately against his chest. He’s not religious by any means, but he gets how much it means to Steven. There’s a billboard on the side of the road, advertising some nonsense psychic. It all hits him. Parallel universes.

It sounds insane, but he already feels like he’s been grasping at straws the whole day. Parallel universes feel like the answer, the ultimatum that makes the most sense. It feels like the answer because he can hear Steven in his head, saying you sound like Bergara. He writes it down on the note he started earlier as the uber pulls up.

It’s one of those nights that you forgive California for being, well California. The sunset is spectacular, beautiful clouds cast in hues of dusky orange. It doesn’t feel like the first of December. He wants to hate California, but the place has given him so much.

He sends Ryan a text,

**To Ryan Bergara 19.07pm**

**_do you believe in parallel universes?_ **

The response doesn’t come for a while, not until he’s folding himself into bed. He’s almost forgotten about it, but the words are there staring back at him.

**From Ryan Bergara 22.48pm**

**_yes and no. alternate universes yes. parallel no._ **

It makes no sense, he sits and ponders over it, until another message comes through, this time longer.

**From Ryan Bergara 22.55pm**

**_shane says that wasn’t clear. alternate universes like the idea that for everything you do there is another version of you that chose the different option, yeah sure why not. but parallel universes always seem to involve a big difference and seem more implausible. it ponders the question of are we really real which is borderline existential. adam seemed stressed editing at the office, are you guys all okay?_ **

Normally he would feel shitty for just sending back _**thanks**_ to such a long text, but it’s confused him. He falls asleep in that state of confusion, and sleep is a cruel restless affair. He doesn’t dream, or if he does, he doesn’t remember it when he wakes up. He calls in sick sending an apology text to Adam and Annie.

Tries to get everything in order, the worlds in a tailspin without Steven and Andrew doesn’t feel like himself. He has never been one for flashy festive decorations, favouring minimalistic decorations. Figures that the best way to restore order is trying to get into the spirit of the holiday thing, in the way that Steven does. He puts an old record on, Hoist’s _The Planets_. It’s not festive, but it hits the spot while he decorates.

Everything flows around him, almost relaxing and like nothing’s wrong. Sometimes he catches sight of himself in the mirror in his lounge. See’s tired eyes reflected and a cross that feels foreign resting on his chest. The room looks nice, a tiny tree with soft fairy lights. Tinsel draped artfully across different parts, and family Christmas heirlooms propped up on the coffee table. It’s too early for drinking, even in the face of this Steven-less world. Putting a James Bond film on and siting down, he starts to wonder if he’s the one that’s slipped into a parallel universe, that somewhere else Steven has woken up and Steven’s world has no Andrew. The cynical in him wonders if Steven would care, Steven’s probably on the second day and accepted that Andrew was a figment of his imagination. He wonders if in that world if Worth It still exists, but shuts that thought down, if it still exists in his world then it must exist wherever Steven is. Worth It is Steven’s baby after all. Then he wonders if it’s Adam and Annie that are the co-hosts. That placates the panic. Adam and Annie are calm, steady rocks kind of people and he’s being foolish, Steven is probably in just as much of a tailspin.

He falls asleep on the couch, exhausted from overthinking and wakes up as dusk is beginning to settle. There’s a ringing in his ears. A popping, for a second, he thinks it’s the world shifting back to normal, he checks his phone, but no dice. No record of Steven. Another Bond film goes into the DVD player, and Andrew finds himself repeating this weird sleep cycle. Only regretting it marginally when he fully wakes up on the third of the month, with a crick in his neck and dry eyes.

The office looms over him, full of memories. He has to go in, it feels reductive to skip another day. There seems to a bustle of urgency, quickly identified as holiday season video panic. Normally the videos are filmed in a month’s or so advance, but the cons of being an internet-based video producer means that you must go with the fresh and the internet changes quickly in such short spaces of time. The worst thing that can happen is getting pulled into a shoot, so he keeps his head down.

The morning passes quietly, he’s doing research that he thinks Steven would want him to do and everyone’s giving him a wide birth, probably because he’s radiating ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibes, was supposedly ‘off sick’ the previous day and looks like he hasn’t slept properly in a week. Everyone apparently excludes Adam, who gives a nod of the head and puts a cup of coffee on Andrew’s desk, and Ryan, who seems to be hovering in the Andrew’s general desk area, even though his own desk is across the office.

When he gets back from lunch, there’s a few co-workers headphones in and tapping away. There’s a stack of paper on his keyboard that wasn’t there before, from far away it looks like a script, and on closer inspection, the front page has the typography and layout for an Unsolved script. Normally, Ryan would read the scripted explanation portions just out from his phone and not print them. The title on the script reads ‘Forest Fenn/TC/E8S4’, but when he turns to the first page, he finds Ryan’s scrawl.

‘Andrew, some theories. Hope this helps you in whatever’

It impresses Andrew, how perceptive Ryan is, that the message sent the other night meant more than he was letting on. The rest of the faux script is a series of random wiki pages and forum print outs explaining the theories between alternative and parallel universes. One key word keeps coming up, jumping out at Andrew’s weary eyes.

HYPOTHETICAL.

He adds that one to the notes on his phone and sends another simple thanks to Ryan.

***

A few more days pass in this weird haze, most of it spent doing research for an episode of Worth It that Adam and Annie seem perplexed about, probably because the idea was never run by them.  The rest of the time spent pouring over Ryan’s theory booklet with a highlighter, trying to pick out strands of what might be logic in amongst absolute bullshit. It’s already the 10th of December and that means a week left until the office closes for the holiday season. A full 10 days without having seen Steven. Andrew thinks that Steven is like a recharge point, that’s why he feels like crap because without Steven he can’t re-energise.

It’s on this tenth day, that someone finally brings up the cross that’s been around his neck. He’s walking next to Adam towards the Tasty kitchens when the bearded man brings it up.

‘I didn’t realise you were religious’

Andrew replies, ‘I’m not’ but he’s suddenly hyperaware of the cross resting on his skin.

‘It’s for- from a friend. An early present’

Adam gives a soft smile and a clap on the back and doesn’t bring it up again, segueing into a question about going out for drinks over the weekend. Andrew takes Adam up on it, sue him for wanting a bit of normalcy back.

Sunday comes with a hangover, and Monday comes with walking into the office and feeling a thousand eyes on him.

There’s the most apologetic looking Adam sat on top of Andrew’s desk, downcast face and sheepish eyes.

‘What have you done’

A flash of hurt comes across the other man’s face at Andrew’s words.

‘It uh wasn’t me, office gossip rumour mill has just gotten a bit out of hand. That’s all’

‘And what’s the office gossip saying?’

Adam’s mouth opens to speak, but a voice behind him says in a low register, ‘Just that you have a boyfriend called Steven and he gave you a cross’.

Andrew’s grateful for the way Ryan and Adam discreetly get him out of the office, because he’s shutting down before Ryan can even finishes telling him about the gossip mill.

Ryan manoeuvres them to the Unsolved HQ, sits Andrew down on a chair with a bottle of water and asks the loaded question in a voice not unlike his theory tone.

‘Andrew, why did you ask about parallel universes’

The thing is, Andrew is highly aware of how closed off he can be, how cynical and withdrawn he can get, even if he does everything with a warm disposition. It’s always been Steven who is the open honest one. He feels so far away from himself, incorrect in the incorrect universe, that its him that’s been pulled out of place and time.

He can’t say ‘I think I’m in one’ or ‘He’s not my boyfriend and this isn’t his cross’, instead he pulls up the photo on his phone, the photo of a photo. Adam and Ryan have blank faces, they don’t recognise the face of a smiling Steven, Andrew’s body aches.

There’s no way he can phrase it, without it sounding like hypothetical bullshit or like he’s an insane man.

‘Don’t lock me up. Just leave this between us. But I ended last month facetiming Steven and I woke up the next day and no one knew who Steven was.’

‘Who was, is he?’ Adam corrects himself halfway through the question as Andrew flinches as the past tense.

‘Worth It is his, his idea. He’s my best friend’ Andrew finds himself petering off quickly, and Ryan might be a shit ghost hunter, but he’s a perceptive man.

‘You’re in love with him aren’t you’

‘I only just realised and then I was here’, the without him is unspoken but hangs in the air.

‘And the cross?’

‘A Christmas present, I saw it, and it reminded me off him and it’s all that’s keeping me grounded here’

Ryan’s texting something on his phone, and then the door to the Unsolved HQ is opening and spilling the outside LA light into the room. Shane’s tall frame fills it up,

‘Car’s ready, office is informed, thinks we’re going to brainstorm an Unsolved/Worth It crossover’

Andrew finds himself grateful that even in whatever world this is, his friends are still exactly the same, it’s a small comfort he revels in. Universes so similar that even though Shane said the car was ready, Ryan’s the one that drives the four of them. Andrew isn’t involved in the discussion of where they are headed, it all seems to have been pre-decided via messages. So it comes as a shock when they pull up to Andrews own apartment. ‘We all agreed it was the safest space for you’ Adam says, and there right.

Andrew lets them all in, and they sit around the kitchen table. Ryan’s looking like he could burn holes into the picture of Steven on the fridge, not out of spite but just out of confusion.

There’s a silence between the four of them that’s stretching on and on, Shane’s the one to break it. ‘We’re going to get the universes back in order’ and he pulls a bottle of whiskey out of nowhere while Ryan slams a roll of paper onto the table.

Adam’s laughing, muttering something about ‘only the unsolved boys’

The suns falling out of sight by the time they start to wind up. They didn’t get too drunk, just enough as Adam reveals halfway through the afternoon, to get Andrew drunk enough to start speaking about Steven with less hesitation. The rolled-out paper is covered in sharpie scribbles, theories strung together with no sight of Andrew’s least favourite word, ‘Hypothetical’

Conclusions is that the fracturing of the universes is something to do with the holiday season. That there’s a conclusion that needs to be found in Andrew’s life before everything can get resolved. Shane had laughed and called it bullshit fiction but had gone soft and apologetic when Ryan looked at him and said, ‘Not bullshit, not here’.

Adam’s convinced it either has something to do with New York, the cross Andrew had purchased for Steven, or the feeling of Holiday nostalgia.

Theoretically they are all kind of silly, movie magic ideas. Shane’s looking up red eye flights to New York. Adam and Ryan are mumbling theories and Andrew finds himself staring at the picture on the fridge.

‘It’s to do with California. Gut feeling’

Shane’s laughing at the words gut feeling and Ryan’s giving him that look again, the one that say’s ‘shut up you big idiot’. Adam’s looking at Andrew like all the answers have come to him. ‘In the other world. Have you ever done a Holiday special?’

‘We’d just filmed it, as a 3-parter, first part was meant to come out maybe last weekend’

‘We haven’t done one.’ And then Adam segues into an unexpected statement. ‘You were going to ask him out if the videos went well weren’t you’

Andrew hadn’t realised it was the truth until he’s hearing the words come from someone else. It’s like a punch to his gut, it makes sense, the dreams about kissing Steven, the pull to buy the cross, the way his life had felt in disarray with Steven gone to New York. With fumbling hands he’s pulls a hefty draft of whiskey into his glass. The sting of the shot is still burning in his mouth as he say’s ‘I think I was’. He hates how perceptive Adam is.

‘Guess we have to right the world, you have a Steven to ask out’ Ryan says with a knowing smile and then pulls up a map of California on his laptop.

Andrew slowly plots up every restaurant visited and activity they had filmed for the Holiday special, but it’s hard to remember because he didn’t plan them, and emotions are running high. There’s an agreed avoidance to call the friends involved in the filming. Which bugs Andrew when he remembers Shane and Ryan eating Rie’s Wasabi puffs, he’d like to see that again, even the memory is giving him a laugh.

’It’s the 13th today which means 12 days till Christmas. All the rom-com tropes suggest that it will all work out for Christmas’ Ryan finishes his sentence backgrounded by Shane’s laughter. ‘This little one here does love his rom-coms’ 

They end up in Andrew’s sitting room, moving on from whiskey to beer, waiting out on takeaway and arguing over which rom com to watch.

It’s a needed distraction, and by the time the other three leave, with hugs and good lucks. It feels like it might work. That night he dreams of Steven, little snippets of kisses he’s planting onto the taller man. At their desks, at home, on shoots and so on. And when Andrew wakes up, feeling well rested and hopeful, he focuses on the way dream Steven had a rose gold cross, the same cross that feels cool resting on Andrew’s chest.

The rest of the week is better, Adam tells Annie about things, with Andrew’s permission and the two of them are protective. The rumours are shut down, Andrew doesn’t know what was said to dispel any of the notions but finds out Shane and Sara had something to do with it, which probably means a crazy comment to deflect things. Andrew feels proud to make it to the weekend without any more breakdowns or panic, there’s a sting because the dreams about Steven haven’t reoccurred. The Sunday, the 19th of December, Andrew finds himself having a moment of doubt, the plans that they had settled on last Monday aren’t getting put into place till tomorrow. Ryan had theorised that it would work better closer to Christmas day.

Sunday’s been slow and lonely, and Andrew finds himself looking in the mirror and feeling the empty space where he wants Steven to be. Something possesses him and before he’s quite aware of what he’s doing, he’s in an uber driving towards the boutique he brought the cross in. The whole drive feels melancholy, there’s no music going but he can hear a guitar melody in his head. And every time he closes his eyes to block out the boredom of sitting in LA traffic, he thinks of his childhood room and that blue glow of the tv.

Part of him wants to pull up to the boutique and find that there was nothing there, but even despite the fact he’s been pulled out of his own timeline, that would be too movie magic to happen. It’s not exactly reassuring when the uber finally pulls up to boutique and finds it the same, but it’s not a crushing feeling either. He walks through the streets aimlessly, calls an uber back home when it starts to get dark. And that’s when it gets movie magic weird. 

It starts snowing.

LA looks beautiful while snow falls, streaks of white illuminated by the glow of the streetlights. It doesn’t feel like anything’s changed, it just makes the world feel beautiful. Makes Andrew feel nostalgic, for childhood winters and tall men with the reflection of happiness in their eyes and hair that never stays the same colour.

His apartment is the same but the photo on the fridge has fallen to the floor. He’s a dumbass for never checking the back of the picture. His recognises his own handwriting, the familiar scrawl of the date in the bottom corner. But there’s Stevens handwriting, more cursive and loopier than his own. ‘the shoot where I knew’.

Andrew wants so desperately for everything to click together in his head, for the words on the picture in to make sense. What did Steven know, what was he missing? He retreats to his phone, the notes and the picture of the paper plans that had been strewn across his table just last week. He takes a picture, of the snow falling out of his window and posts it to Instagram. No caption, like normal. Sends a message to the group chat between him, Adam and the unsolved boys. It just say’s

**_T **omorrow**  _ **

He falls into bed and into restless sleep, watches coloured fairy lights dance behind his eyes and wonders where everything went wrong. The alarm clock is flashing 11.58, red glow the only light illuminating the room. It turns 11.59 and Andrew falls asleep, it’s then that the snow globe stops its flurry. It’s then that the snow globe that is Andrew’s world settles down.

***

‘Winter is brutal here in New York, and it’s fine and I know I’ll adjust, but it’s hard when I know how warm it is in California. With you. I’m drunk, early holiday party I think maybe? Can’t remember….And I know you know that I don’t believe in destiny but woops tickets to LAX might have fallen in my pocket so could I stay, I’ll be there on the 20th, can you wait 20 days for me? You’re asleep I’m drunk, just call me back. I lov- I’ll see you soon Andrew, sweet dreams.’

Steven’s voice sounds slurred and fuzzy, a quality to it that makes it the stupidest, yet most heart-warming voice message Andrew thinks he’s ever received. Andrew feels barely awake, and like an idiot for not putting his phone on charge the night before, its flashing 7% and all he wants is to lie in the sheets and listen to Steven’s voice on repeat.

It’s a two-path road, one path he lies in bed and over thinks everything, or the other path he gets up and charges his phone. Suddenly everything is at a reset. He has 20 days to live again, because his dying phone is telling him that it’s the 1st of December.

Movement is on auto-pilot, Andrew knows it’s safer to play the second path to get up out of bed, go down to the kitchen and get some food in him to make sure everything’s real. He’s sat at the kitchen table before he’s aware, there’s no Christmas decorations up in the apartment but there’s still the same photo on the fridge. With the same scrawl on the back, ‘the shoot where I knew’.

There’s a cross on his neck, and it feels light and not a burden. It’s December 1st and Andrew must live 20 days of his life again, but it’s okay because the reward for everything is Steven.

Time travel or parallel universes or whatever just happened, has split things weirdly. Because when Andrew shifted to the Steven-less world, there was no trace of the original world. But back in the original there’s tiny traces, little reminders of the parallel. A photo of snowy L.A still posted on Instagram, the rose gold cross around his neck, the notes he had written down on his phone, a text to Ryan about parallel universes, with a different response. These facts are just little bonuses because being back in the original universe is infinitely better.

Even working for BuzzFeed, Andrew figures they won’t take ‘jumped universes’ as a valid excuse for taking the day off. So, he fakes sick bug instead.

The apartment is boring without decorations, so he puts _The Planets_ on and decorates for Christmas. In exactly the same way as it was before, as a memory homage, finds himself thinking about everything and nothing at all. When he catches sight of himself in the mirror, he doesn’t look tired the way he did last time. It’s comforting. When everything’s done, he opens his MacBook and orders for replacement alcohol to be sent to Adam, Shane and Ryan’s apartments, each with a note that says, ‘Early Christmas present’. Part guilt that he didn’t get to say goodbye to them in the other universe, though part of it is a slight invitation for them to all go drinking again, just in less dire circumstances. Most of the purchase though is gratefulness that they didn’t have to put into motion the stupid plan the four of them had come up with while drunk to get Andrew back to this universe, probably because it could have killed one of them, most likely Shane.

Once that’s done, Andrew finds himself toying with the idea of buying a ticket to New York, he’s contemplative and covered in remains of tinsel. Steven’s phone call and the sudden new physicality of the man has made Andrew want. It’s hard to fight the part of him that say’s ‘don’t buy a ticket’. That’s when the fear hits, Steven will be awake by now, contactable, but whether he will want Andrew to contact him is the biggest unknown. Steven probably regrets the drunken phone call, it probably all meant nothing.

Andrew knows he should just grateful he gets to live in a world with Steven. Share the same time space, have everyone know who the other man is. Suddenly it’s all too much, he wants to lie down and just have the world stop for a second, for everything to not be rushing through his brain like this. Instead a knock on the door interrupts the flurry of thoughts.

There’s no one there when he answers it, but something soft wraps around his feet. Andrew looks down to find a fluffy grey cat dashing in between his legs and in to the apartment. The thought flashes across his mind, how the pelt of the cat is like Steven’s hair when it was silver. His eyes track the cat as he closes the door. There’s another knock immediately.

‘Merry Christmas, do you like her?’

Despite being clearly just off a plane and evidently still slightly hungover, Steven looks ethereally beautiful. Technically for Andrew it’s been 21 days in a world without Steven and even longer since he last saw the man, he wants to say, ‘I love you’ or ‘I missed you’, instead he says, ‘December 1st is a bit early to be giving Christmas presents isn’t it’.

Steven’s laugh is blinding, slinging an arm around Andrew’s shoulder as an imitation of a hug. ‘You just say that because you haven’t gotten me a gift yet’. The door shuts behind them, and all Andrew can say is ‘Actually I have’. Steven’s arm is so warm and heavy, still wrapped around his shoulder, guiding them both through to the couch. The fairy lights strung up are illuminating Stevens face perfectly, lights reflecting off the tinsel and softening the taller man’s already soft features.

It’s perfect, so perfect it feels like a dream.

‘I’ve been keeping it safe for you. I’m sorry it’s not wrapped; the past week has been kind of… chaotic to say the least.’ His arms feel like they’re going through molasses, all heavy and thick as he reaches up to take the chain of his neck. Steven gasps when he see’s the cross. Such a soft gasp that echoes across Andrew’s mind on repeat. Steven’s nods his head and lets Andrew clasp the fine chain around his neck.

‘Andrew, thank you. It’s beautiful.’

The cat darts in between them, fur soft on Andrew’s bare toes.

‘Steven, I have to tell you something’

Steven’s eyes are big, mouth in a small smile, his hand is caressing the cross that’s been newly placed around his neck.

Andrew’s proud of himself for not stuttering or fucking up the sentence, for looking the other man in the eye and saying the thoughts that have been building up for so long.

‘I love you’

Steven’s kiss is soft and tastes like peach chap stick, his voice is soft when he replies ‘I love you too’

Andrew has so many questions and thoughts, that he should tell Steven about the parallel universe, but instead of voicing any of this, they trade kisses and make coffee.  

He doesn’t ask for an explanation, as to why Steven left New York so early and hadn’t indicated in their frequent conversations that he was coming to California.

The picture that’s been his one saving grace throughout all of this, is resting on the kitchen table and all Andrew can think is, how this could be all in his head, grand delusions. Steven wouldn’t leave New York this early not even for him. That the picture is a leftover reminder of a crazy 20-day hallucination. Steven can’t love him too, this is all a dream, he’s probably still in the other universe.

The panic leaves when Steven kisses him again, Andrew can feel Steven smiling into the kiss, making him smile as the other man pulls away.

‘I remember this, the shoot where I knew I was in love with you. I think Adam realised this was when I knew, judging from the way he said “about time” to me. You should thank Adam and the Unsolved boys for me being here by the way.’

Finally, Andrew breaks, it’s the comment that pushes him over the edge, laughter at the fact, which fades into tears. It makes Steven cry to, with a soft ‘Don’t cry, are you not happy I’m here?’

‘I’m so happy you here, just a lot has happened’

Steven rests his head against Andrew’s and say’s ‘Tell me, I’m yours’

***

Steven stays the rest of December in California. Tells Andrew that he’s not moving back to California permanently, that they will have to be long distance sometimes, but the cat, (whom Andrew dubs Snowball, after the snow globe feeling and her grey fluffy pelt) is Steven’s way of saying that he will always be with Andrew, even when they are apart.

Adam, Shane and Ryan all presume the alcohol gifted by Andrew was a thank you for getting Steven and him together, which is what it was intended for originally, just in a slightly different manner e.g. parallel universe insanity.

They get an Air BNB in Berkeley and spend Christmas in a little house overlooking the bay. Just revelling in each other, soaking in a hot tub. They don’t give each other presents, though Andrew prints out the notes he wrote on his phone, the notes that existed to remind himself of all the things he knew about Steven to be true. The note sits on Andrew’s fridge back in L.A, next to the photo and all the new photos they’ve accumulated together in the space of twenty three days or so.

Andrew’s whole life has been little bits falling into place while he sits and pretends like he’s in control of everything. Sitting on the deck, watching his boyfriend drink champagne in a hot tub, he feels like this might be a little bit like destiny. That maybe, just maybe the universe fractured just to show him what he was missing. And when he catches a glimpse of the rose gold cross, that he had worn not so long ago. He thinks about taking Steven home with him next holiday, kissing him illuminated by the blue glow of his old bedroom tv. Nostalgia is good and all, but the now is more important he thinks as he slips into the hot tub and revels in the feel of Steven’s hand in his. Memories of the twenty days he spent out of time will linger until they fade, as all memories do.

(The kiss he receives when he tells Steven ‘Merry Christmas’ will probably be etched into his brain forever though, a memory that won’t fade in a hurry)

**Author's Note:**

> blink and you'll miss it shane/sara/ryan was implied for my own guilty pleasure. also please try and convince me that andrew isn't a little bit in love with steven.
> 
> apologies for any time zone wierdness im dyscalcic and british so my knowledge is ehh
> 
> the title comes from the fact that LA is the second most populous city in america, after new York. and all the nostalgia andrew goes through. (that and i think it sounds good)


End file.
